Ranchi, April 23: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke about it yesterday. And now, Jharkhand’s first central university has finally found itself a home: it will come up over 300 acres at a site in Khunti district, 18km from the state capital.

On April 27, a team from the state human resource development department would visit the site — in village Dungra under the Khunti sadar block — along the Ranchi-Khunti road (near Sapphire International School).

Higher education director Anjani Kumar Shrivastava, who has confirmed the location, met officials of the Union HRD ministry recently.

Khunti deputy commissioner S.S. Meena told The Telegraph he had been asked to provide 300-acre land in and around Dungra village. “We have identified the probable land stretches. About 90 acres fall under gair mazarua (government) category, while the remaining over 200 acres are raiyati (private holdings) in the hands of both tribal and non-tribal owners,” he said.

Although the state HRD department is yet to send a formal requisition for land acquisition, sources revealed the state government would take prior consent from respective gram sabhas before starting the process.

State HRD secretary J.B. Tubid said his department would offer the identified land to the Union HRD ministry which was ready with a draft Bill for establishing 16 Central universities across the country.

The draft of the umbrella legislation that would govern all new Central universities for the first time has been sent to various ministries for their comments. As of now, there are only 22 Central universities in the country with Delhi having as many as four.

The 16 states where Central universities are to come up in the next five years at an estimated cost of Rs 5,000 crore are Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab.